It used to be that Fagin types would merely recruit poor kids such as Oliver Twist to pick pockets, but today’s exploiters of innocence operate on a grander scale. The best current example may be 16-year-old Swedish “climate activist” Greta Thunberg (shown), who, it’s reported, is being financed by green corporate energy companies looking to turn a profit.
As American Thinker writes, “Kids are great tools for big money and major powers lurking in the shadows, attempting to enact a political agenda. The latest instance, and it’s a doozy, is young Greta Thunberg, the Swedish child climate activist who’s coming to the states … to persuade us all to jump in on the global warming cavalcade of green laws to restrict our own freedoms — which, as it happens, will just coincidentally make the green elites even richer.”
In fact, according to the U.K. Times (subscription only) in a weekend report entitled “Greta Thunberg and the plot to forge a climate warrior,” energy companies whose concern is increasing the green in their pockets orchestrated the girl’s rise from the get-go.
The paper writes in its subtitle that the teenage activist “wants nothing more than to change the world. The shadowy cabal behind her has other goals.” The Times then explains that the “Greta phenomenon has also involved green lobbyists, PR hustlers, eco-academics and a think tank founded by a wealthy former minister in Sweden’s Social Democratic government with links to the country’s energy companies. These companies are preparing for the biggest bonanza of government contracts in history: the greening of the western economies. Greta, whether she and her parents know it or not, is the face of their political strategy.”
The Fagin who discovered Thunberg is, American Thinker tells us, Al Gore acolyte and “social media entrepreneur Ingmar Rentzhog of a social media site called ‘We Don’t Have Time.’ He got her name from another activist who had been auditioning for ‘fresh green faces.’”
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Rentzhog “wanted to make money the way Gore did on green energy contracts,” American Thinker continues. “And just coincidentally, Greta’s mom wanted to sell a book about how green activism ‘saved her family.’ Rentzhog put it all together, and bango: Greta just spontaneously appeared out of nowhere to sell the world on global warming.
The Times provides more detail on Rentzhog:
Trained by former US vice-president Al Gore’s environmental group, the Climate Reality Project, Rentzhog set up We Don’t Have Time in late 2017 to “hold leaders and companies accountable for climate change” by leveraging “the power of social media”.
He and his chief operating officer, David Olsson, have backgrounds in finance, not environmental activism: Rentzhog as the founder of Laika Consulting, an investment relations company, and Olsson with Svenska Bostadsfonden, one of Sweden’s biggest property funds, whose board Rentzhog joined in June 2017. The platform’s investors included Gustav Stenbeck, whose family control Kinnevik, one of Sweden’s largest investment corporations.
In May last year, Rentzhog became the chairman and Olsson a board member of a think tank called Global Utmaning (Global Challenge). Its founder, Kristina Persson, is an heir to an industrial fortune.
“The list of corporate luminaries and green hucksters that follows in the background to this Global Challenge angle is stunning,” American Thinker also informs. They witnessed Al Gore become a green billionaire — and they want a piece of the action.
Of course, from the Parkland students to “Do it for the children!” appeals to kids used as props at press conferences, this is nothing new. “Corporate and foundation and even global superpower interests use them [kids] by selling them as ‘stars’ to the low-information voters as spontaneous talent sensations,” to quote American Thinker again.
I’ll only add that aside from money, there’s a strong ideological component, with the motives varying from person to person; some care only about money, some only about ideology, and some about both. As to ideology, Rasputin-like Saikat Chakrabarti, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff, admitted earlier this year that the Green New Deal “wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”
“Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he said.
Speaking of Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Thunberg has much in common with her. It has been reported that the congresswoman appeared to come out of nowhere because she was chosen to run for her seat — by a radical left-wing group called Justice Democrats — out of 10,000 applicants. In essence, she won an audition.
And why not? Think about it: What talents do the most effective politicians and activists really have? As Ocasio-Cortez’ many inane statements and Thunberg’s youthful naiveté evidence, knowledge and wisdom are not prerequisites. Rather, it’s all about image: being attractive and a fluent speaker and having some charm.
Not only does little Greta seem to fit this bill, but also note that she’s a 16-year-old who looks about 13. Why is this significant? You might have noticed that famous child actors often look very young for their age (e.g., star twins Dylan and Cole Sprouse looked 13 at 16). Such late bloomers are highly valued because, if you need someone to play a nine-year-old, it’s easier to work with a 12-year-old who looks nine than a child actually that age.
Likewise, Thunberg is a mid-teen who can “play a little girl.” It’s Hollywood, symbolism over substance, a fictional heart-tugging film — entitled Green Nightmares.
As to this, the Times concludes, “For energy titans in Sweden, as elsewhere, saving the planet means government contracts to print the green stuff. Green energy lobbyists are using populist scare tactics and a children’s crusade to bypass elected representatives. But the destination is technocracy, not democracy; profit, not redistribution. Greta, a child of woke capitalism, is being used to ease the transition to green corporatism.”
Of course, like most modern movies, this one has a strong social-justice-warrior message — and, its creators hope, will make them gobs of the green they care about most.
Photo: AP Images
